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Transmission control unit drive based on the AUTOSAR standard

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ICEESE 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science1234567890
128 (2018) 012188 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/128/1/012188

Transmission control unit drive based on the AUTOSAR

standard

Xiucai Guo, Zhen Qin

School of Electrical and Control Engineering, Xi’an University of Science and
Technology, Xi’an 710054, China

qingzhen52099@163.com

Abstract. It is a trend of automotive electronics industry in the future that automotive electronics
embedded system development based on the AUTOSAR standard. AUTOSAR automotive
architecture standard has proposed the transmission control unit (TCU) development architecture
and designed its interfaces and configurations in detail. This essay has discussed that how to drive
the TCU based on AUTOSAR standard architecture. The results show that driving the TCU with
the AUTOSAR system improves reliability and shortens development cycles.

1. AUTOSAR Architecture
AUTOSAR（Automotive Open System Architecture）is an open automotive systems architecture
standard jointly developed by the world's major automotive manufacturers, component suppliers,
automotive electronics companies, semiconductor and software companies. The goal is to establish an
open automotive electronics industry standard to provides a fundamental function management solution
for applications and software modules.
Basic philosophy of AUTOSAR:
1) Control the complexity of electronic equipment even functional requirements of automotive
electronics is constantly growing.
2) Increase the flexibility of automotive electronics in porting, upgrading, and updating.
3) Provide electronic device scalability crossing product lines
4) Improve the quality and reliability of automotive electronics equipment.

1.1. AUTOSAR Standard Architecture

Figure 1 AUTOSAR Basic Architecture

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ICEESE 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science1234567890
128 (2018) 012188 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/128/1/012188

From Figure 1 we can see, AUTOSAR basic structure is divided into four layers, namely: Application
Layer, Runtime Environment (RTE), Basic Software and Microcontroller. AUTOSAR can make
software architecture completely separated of layer and layer through hierarchical structure and specific
software interface. The bottom is the underlying hardware--the hardware platform MCU. The upper
layer is the underlying software layer, mainly to interact directly with the MCU, provide MCU
peripherals and board-level peripherals drive, and also provide software interface for upper layer. The
underlying software layer consists of the operating system, communication layer, service layer, ECU
abstraction layer, microcontroller abstraction layer, and complex drivers. It is not visible to the user.
The upper layer of the underlying software layer is runtime environment, it exists in each ECU, and
different ECU runtime environment has different ways to achieve, The purpose is to provide a bridge
for communication between layers, and provide an environment to isolate the bottom for the upper layer
software, making it completely independent of the underlying hardware of the system. The layer upper
RTE is application layer, contains interfaces directly interact with users, at the same time, all software
algorithms, strategies are packaged and implemented through application layer. In the above software
architecture, layers can only interact with each other through a standard software interface to achieve
relative isolation, then it can be ported on different hardware platforms.

1.2. AUTOSAR Development Process

AUTOSAR standardizes the development of automotive electronics software at the system, ECU and
software component levels. System-level design includes communication matrix design, the design of
the interfaces between ECUs in the system; ECU-level design is carried out in AUTOSAR standard
development tools (such as Studio Tresos), including the interface of application software components,
configuration of basic software; Software component-level design can build the component framework
by importing software outputted by ECU-level. When the application software design is completed,
Integrate and compile the .c/.h file and generate the target file, download it into the TCU.

2. Transmission Control Unit

Transmission Control Unit (TCU) is made up of 16-bit or 32-bit processor, signal processing circuits,
power-driven modules and other components.Its operating temperature depends on the installation
location, usually installed in the cockpit.So, the required temperature level is lower( -40 ~ 90 degrees).
The terminal equipment --TCU-- can transmit the information about location , speed, vehicle or other
information back to the system platform through wireless transmission. Users monitor or manage their
vehicles easily by computer and mobile phone.

2.1. The Basic Composition of TCU

The components of TCU mainly are microcontroller, detection circuits, driving circuits, power circuits
and communication circuits and other components, as shown in Figure 2.
Serial
Communication

Pulse
Shaping Valve
Circuit Drive
Circuit

Detection
Switch
Signal Micoroc and
Hardware
Input
Circuit ontroller Protection
Circuit

Level PWM Motor

Filter Drive Circuit
Circuit

Figure 2 The Basic Composition of TCU

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ICEESE 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science1234567890
128 (2018) 012188 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/128/1/012188

The microcontroller of TCU circuit is MPC5744P produced by NXP company, it is based on

Freescale's Power Architecture. This microcontroller requires highly integrity of automotive safety for
chassis and safety application or other applications. In order to meet the highest safety standards for
automotive and industrial safety applications, the MPC5744P’s operating frequency up to 200MHz. It
owns embedded floating-point units, supports safety standards ISO 26262 / ASILD, and its device
junction temperature up to 150 °C or 165 °C. This chip is suitable for automotive chassis and safety and
industrial application.
Detection circuits are divided into pulse detections, switch detections and analog detections. Pulse
detections are divided into pulse counting and pulse width detections. Such as engine speed, input or
output shaft speed measurement uses the pulse counting. However, throttle valve opening uses the pulse
width measurement.
The main measurement circuits of the analog are filter circuits and amplifier circuits. A / D
conversion is built-in microcontroller with 12-bit A / D converter. Transmission ratio is driven by a DC
motor. There are four H-type MOSFET circuits to achieve positive and negative PWM motor control.
And, the solenoid valve driving current is also driven by the MOSFET. In addition to the mainly
switching circuits and freewheeling diode in the driving circuits, there are protection circuits and
current detection circuits.
The main functions of the communication interfaces are to observe the working status of the TCU, to
analyse the failure of the detection sensors and to share the sensors resource.

2.2. TCU drive principle based on AUTOSAR standard

Since AUTOSAR has adopted standardized interfaces managements, users must use the appropriate
softwares to set up each driving interface. Studio Tresos (EB) which is the AUTOSAR standard
development tool is used in this study. EB is an Eclipse-based configuration and code generation tool
for vehicle software module . It enables users to configure software modules, and users can validate
configuration conformances. It can also generate codes for standard software modules such as the
AUTOSAR standard software kernel. Due to extensibility and openness of the structure, it can integrate
user-specific software modules or inherit software components in addition to the AUTOSAR basic
software modules.
The TCU driving based on the AUTOSAR standard mainly develops components of the application
layer software of the AUTOSAR architecture, that is definitions of ports, interfaces, running entities,
and RTE events corresponding to triggering running entities.

2.2.1. Ports. Port defines the directions in which Software Components (SWC) communicating with
the outside world. The definitions of the ports, that are, in the EB, the definitions of MPC5744P chip
pins. The main definitions of the pins’ types and directions.The types of ports are GPIO, SPI, ADC,
CAN, Etimer, etc.. The multiplexing functions of the chip pins have to be correctly chose in order to
achieve the desired functions. Figure 3 shows the configurations of ports in the EB. This port is an
output port of CAN communication and the internal pin ID is 11.

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ICEESE 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science1234567890
128 (2018) 012188 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/128/1/012188

Figure 3 Configuration of Port

2.2.2. Software interface. After the definitions of the ports, users must define the software interfaces,
because the first step only defines the input or output directions and types, the contents of these ports
also need to be defined by the software interfaces. As shown in Figure 4, the software configured ADC0
sampling type that is interruption sampling, sampling prescaler is 2, the ground reference voltage is 3V
and so on.

Figure 4 Configuration of Iinterface

The functions to drive TCU are completely developed in advance based on Simulink, as long as the
relevant parameters of the configuration are completed in the EB, the tool can automatically generate
the corresponding C language functions. Therefore, developers only need to provide parameters. When
access to external calibration parameters, these interfaces play key roles.
The above configurations completed single software component. If developers want to achieve the
corresponding function, a combination of these software components is needed through the associated
instance ports to create links. The links include the internal links and external links., External links use
CAN bus communication.

2.2.3. CAN communication. Control Area Nerwork (CAN) was first introduced by the German
company BOSCH for automotive internal measurement and implementation of data communication
between components.

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ICEESE 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science1234567890
128 (2018) 012188 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/128/1/012188

TCU own CAN communication serial ports, the external data link is also created mainly using CAN
network communication. For CAN communication configarations, the most important things are the
calculation of the baud rate and the calculation of the nominal bit time. According to the crystal clock
and external serial clock to select the correct baud rate is the most critical step. The baud rate and the
nominal bit time was the inverse relationship,that is,

baudrate  1 / t NBT (1)

t NBT
is the period of the nominal bit time, which consists of four sections, SYNC_SEG, PROP_SEG,
PHASE_SEG1, and PHASE_SEG2, where the value of SYNC_SEG is a quantum of time. Therefore,
the relationship between these four parts and time quantum can also be shown as follows,

t NBT  (1  PROP _ SEG  PHASE _ SEG1  PHASE _ SEG 2) * tQ  NBT * tQ (2)

t
The Q is time quantum. The ranges of SYNC_SEG, PROP_SEG, PHASE_SEG1 and
PHASE_SEG2 are shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Value Range
Segment Duration
SYNC_SEG t SYNC _ SEG  1* tQ

PROP_SEG t PROP _ SEG  (1,2,...,8) *t Q

PHASE_SEG1 t PHASE _ SEG  (1,2,...,8) *t Q
PHASE_SEG2 t PHASE _ SEG 2  max( IPT , t PHASE _ SEG 2 )
NBT 8,9,10，...，
25
In general, peripheral clock and crystal clock can be obtained from the datasheet, so the required
values can be calculated and configured according to the formula. After the configuration is completed,
CANalyzer is used to debug. The debugging result is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 CAN Communication

3. Test verification
Convert the above configurations to real C codes, embed the function codes of each component and the
target codes file of BSW, then download it into the target TCU. In the end, connect the TCU with
solenoid valves, sensors and other real loads.

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ICEESE 2017 IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science1234567890
128 (2018) 012188 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/128/1/012188

Figure 6 Testing Curve

In Figure 7, the red curve is the input shaft speed, the blue curve is the engine speed. When the
vehicle speed accelerates to the experimental value, the input shaft speed rises to a certain value and
remains unchanged, and the engine speed also rises to a certain value to keep gentle. When the vehicle
speed declines, the two also will decline.
In fact, in theory, input shaft speed and engine speed will be a proportional relationship at a certain
moment, this relationship is not only related to the speed, but solenoid valves, throttle opening, etc..
The test verifies that the TCU driving development method based on the AUTOSAR is correctly
applied.

4. Summary
Automotive electronic embedded system development based on AUTOSAR standard is a trend in the
future development of the automotive electronics industry. Based on the AUTOSAR standard, the
modular design and real-time environment interface configuration of the TCU driving system can
separate the system application layer software from the underlying basic software to facilitate the
expansion, migration and reuse of the software. Compared with the traditional TCU system
development mode , this way will increase the reliability of TCU, and shorten the development cycle,
improve the maintenance efficiency.

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